VOGONS


First post, by comteck123

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Did System shock supported MT-32, because when I played the game through DOSBox (No Munt! The build I use has MT-32 emulation built in.) it seems to work but it has reduced or enhanced sound quality. I was using the General Midi option in setup. But the question is, did system shock officially supported MT-32?

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Reply 1 of 15, by PhilsComputerLab

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MIDI doesn't know what unit is attached on the other end. It just sends MIDI information (what instrument, what tone...) and what you have hooked up will just play it.

I don't think the MT-32 is directly supported but it can be patched to be General MIDI compatible.

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Reply 2 of 15, by Great Hierophant

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System Shock does not directly support MT-32, so you will need to transmit a MID file to the unit before playing the game to rearrange the music patches to ones appropriate for General MIDI Get it here :

Roland MT-32 General MIDI Conversion Utility

Also, if System Shock uses MIDI channels 1 or 9 (depending on whether the MT-32 is receiving channels 1-8 or 2-9) or 11-16, you will not hear those notes.

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Reply 3 of 15, by comteck123

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Apparently, the music plays just fine but the main menu only plays a few notes and I can barely hear the main menu music but in-game it works.

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Reply 5 of 15, by PhilsComputerLab

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comteck123 wrote:

Also I downloaded mt2gm above a while ago but I don't know how to install it.

I made a 3h long Video Tutorial about the MT-32 and CM MIDI modules a while ago.

General MIDI with MT-32 is covered here with the time marker: http://youtu.be/OLvsaJ4h-VY?t=2h41m43s

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Reply 7 of 15, by comteck123

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Well it seems that after applying the patch it works, but when I exit the program, it erases the instruments so I have to to it again.

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Reply 8 of 15, by PhilsComputerLab

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comteck123 wrote:

Well it seems that after applying the patch it works, but when I exit the program, it erases the instruments so I have to to it again.

Yes some games send MIDI reset at start of the game or afterwards. You can unplug MT-32 before quitting but that's a hassle.

Write a batch file so it's easy to do.

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Reply 9 of 15, by CrossBow777

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I've not been able to get System Shock to work with my MT-32 even when I use the MTGM.mid before hand to set it into GM instrument mapping mode. I tried it on both the CD and floppy versions and only get midi information on the rhythm channel on my MT-32.

g883j7-2.png
Midi Modules: MT-32 (OLD), MT-200, MT-300, MT-90S, MT-90U, SD-20

Reply 10 of 15, by Mok

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Or you can just use my MT32GM driver for Miles Sound System to get it working without much hassle (it's on this forum possibly a page or two down as it's been a while). Probably there will be some minor hitching because SS plays the music by randomly switching short sequences and the driver uploads instruments at the start of a new part (which is slow on MT-32). SS uses custom setup program so just copy MT32GM.MDI as MPU401.MDI and select General Midi for the music.

Reply 11 of 15, by CrossBow777

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You didn't read what I said. I already tested it with the MT32GM patch driver. I have that patch utility since I got my LAPC-I in the late 90s.. If you manually patch the cyb.cfg file in the game and change the Music card = to 5, then the installer will actually show the music card to be a Roland MT-32 even though that isn't normally available in the list. But it sounds the same as if you had chosen General Midi. All you get are rhythm/drum sounds and there is NO melody at all through an actual MT-32 or emulated through munt. Using the MT2GM util beforehand does not change this. It seems that the instruments are being played in the upper channel range such as 10-16 for general midi and that doesn't translate on the MT-32 hence why only drums are played. It is also worth noting that the drums that play on the MT-32 do NOT match up with what is played on an actual general midi device. So again, I was curious how others have gotten this to work. What started this for me was someone mentioning how the game appeared to be missing notes when played back through MUNT and they wanted someone with an actual MT-32 to confirm. I can confirm this game both the floppy version and CDrom version do not appear to support the MT32 and using the MT2GM util doesn't get around this.

g883j7-2.png
Midi Modules: MT-32 (OLD), MT-200, MT-300, MT-90S, MT-90U, SD-20

Reply 13 of 15, by sergm

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Yet if it comes to emulating GM with MT-32, sadly it will never be complete. One may achieve more or less adequate results with two physical units only (or two munt cores, or a combination, heh). To give it a go, I think it's easiest to use Falcosoft Soundfont Midi Player which implements GM emulation via a dual-munt scheme, and then decide whether it's worth the trouble to set it up in hardware. Still, from my experience, there are few GM patches loosely emulated, even having all 16 MIDI channels covered.

Reply 14 of 15, by Mok

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CrossBow777 wrote:

You didn't read what I said. I already tested it with the MT32GM patch driver. I have that patch utility since I got my LAPC-I in the late 90s.

No, my MT32GM is unrelated to the original Roland midi file. The game works just fine with it (at least in the beginning as that was as far as I tried). Sergm posted link to the thread just above. Not sure if it's the latest version as I haven't touched it for a year or so.

sergm wrote:

Yet if it comes to emulating GM with MT-32, sadly it will never be complete. One may achieve more or less adequate results with two physical units only (or two munt cores, or a combination, heh).

My driver works decently (minus bugs) as it does a bit more than usual mt to gm remappers:
- replaces all instruments and not only a few that fit into user slots like in the original Roland "solution".
- plays channels 1-16
- swaps stereo
- adds panning to percussion
But:
- it works only for AIL/MSS/SOS and cannot be used as a general driver. Needs to upload instruments at the beginning of a sequence so simple midi streaming is not possible (mt-32 is too slow for on-the-fly uploading without errors, it would work fine in MUNT but not on the real hardware).
- the instruments are okish but I'm not a musician so some are really bad. Example: Anyone heard any decent tubular bells on MT-32? I have yet to hear one that doesn't sound like crap... I decided to not use CM32's extra samples so some fx are bad too.
- rare gm sequences with heavy channel usage will sound pretty bad with many drops.